Telemachus 0023

Mulligan has finished shaving, and has lost the skirmish with Stephen, so he heads back downstairs. In telling Stephen to quit his “moody brooding,” he triggers in Stephen’s mind a memory of the days at the end of his mother’s life. Instead of praying with his mother at the time of her death, Stephen sings the W. B. Yeats poem “Who Goes with Fergus.” The line from that poem “And no more turn aside and brood.” occurs to him all day.

“Chuck Loyola” is notthe name of another friend, but is rather Mulligan’s request to Stephen to leave behind his Jesuitical rigidity (the Jesuit order was founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola) and get over it.

“Sassenach” is a Scots word for Englishman–it’s derived from the word “saxon.”

I’ve never particularly thought it was Mulligan who utters the first stanza of “Who Goes With Fergus?” here but, instead, his comment about “moody brooding” brings up the sound of the song in Stephen’s head.

In a novel words and their source are not connected with the same anchors or constraints as they are in a play or a movie and Joyce plays upon this freedom throughout ULYSSES to give us a shifting sense of perspective and multiple viewpoints. But in comics it’s trickier to do.

If Mulligan were to be singing that exact song that Stephen carries in such a sharp and painful memory of his mother’s last days, if he were able to do that knowingly at that moment in their conversation, what does that say about the two men’s relationship? How much of a jerk can Mulligan be?